twitter of faith

November 23, 2008

Adam Cleaveland Walker started it. I’ve thought along similar lines many times. Edward de Bono inspired me. He talked about simping. It’s not ignoring the complexity of things where they exist, but consciously simplifying something.

So, if you had to write a statement of faith in 140 characters, what would it be? This really isn’t something new, Paul, and actually a pre-Pauline tradition, did this. They said: “Jesus Christ is Lord” (Phillipians 2:11). This 19 characters (in Greek) had some really powerful implications. On the one hand by using the same word which was used in the Septuaginta (the Greek Old Testament) when talking about God, and applying this to Jesus, and on the other hand by using the same word that was used to talk about the Roman Ceaser, and applying this to Jesus. This short phrase was able to say that in our ethics we live by the way of Jesus, not of Ceaser, in our theology we follow the way of Jesus, and not the theology of first century Judaism.

In this day and age, what would we say? And they have made it easier, you get 140 characters, not just 19 (OK, the Greeks had the advantage of not using spaces in their writing, which you would probably have to use). 140 characters to write your statement of faith. What would it be?

Here’s the challenge:

If you’re not on twitter yet, click here to see what it’s all about and why you should be.

If you’re on twitter (or just joined), log in and tweet your personal statement of faith…in 140 characters or less.

Add the hashtag #TOF somewhere in your tweet. That will actually make it 136 characters, but it also makes it easy for us to find and compile all of these statements.

Encourage your friends to take the “Twitter of Faith” challenge, too – imagine how cool it would be if this meme spreads, proclaiming the gospel across the internets (well, at least across twitter).

Adam, Mark, Chad, and Wendy have all posted this to their blogs. Neal has blogged it on the presbymergent blog. There’s also a facebook page and corresponding event, too, and even if you’re not on Twitter, you can click here to scroll through the many TOFs that have been filling up the web in the past few hours.

I really like this idea. Forces one to think about what one really believes, doesn’t it?

Anycase, just an interesting observation: while the statement “Jesus Christ is Lord” comprises 19 characters in most printed Greek editions, in most handwritten Greek manuscripts, this would be only 6 characters, as all three of these titles/names would have been abbreviated. (One calls this phenomenon “nomina sacra” – “holy names” – and it is found in virtually all of the Greek manuscripts that have survived.)